Monthly Archives: July 2017

As the weeks spin on, there are still no solutions in sight for that growing swarm of problems facing communities in northern Manitoba.

Problems such as closing the port in Churchill, cutting back and then suspending the rail service, a shrinking time frame for winter ice roads and limited local access to healthy food, medical care and quality education — even just having clean drinking water — are like the insects that make life miserable, but not impossible, for northern residents who live far from the Golden Boy.

News of some upgrades to cellphone service or access to the internet seem like public-relations maneuvers, leaving the main swarm untouched.

Foot-dragging on the problems of northern communities is inexcusable. Further, whatever the competing federal responsibilities might be, First Nations communities are equally part of our life together in Manitoba, and the provincial government should also address their basic needs.

First, the north is warmer than it was, and that trend is going to continue — likely even faster than has been predicted, because people are not transitioning to a lower-carbon lifestyle. We can blame that on other people, elsewhere, but in fact we are doing no better ourselves. The Manitoba government is not only shirking its responsibility to provide leadership on greenhouse gas emissions, but through cuts to public transit subsidies it is actually making things worse. Something constructive and substantial must be done, immediately.

Comments on “what Manitobans want” about a carbon tax sound like an episode of Family Feud. The answers depend on the questions asked and who happened to be in the crowd that was surveyed on the day.

Moreover, expecting Todd MacKay of the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation (CTF) to say something good about a carbon tax (“Manitobans should resist carbon tax,” July 5) would be like expecting the Dairy Farmers Association to say nice things about margarine.

The lesson to be learned here is never to use opinion surveys to direct government policy one way or the other. Surveys tend to yield the results desired by the people who commission them. From the questions themselves (where a loaded question gets you a loaded answer) to the selection of contributors, surveys have become tools of propaganda more than social analysis.

To use the poorly designed, badly administered, self-selected survey on carbon tax offered by the Manitoba government as anything more than an illustration of how to do things wrong is, therefore, simply absurd.

Further, it’s not just about what you ask, but what instrument you use for the survey. I have queried classes of university students for several years now and found that most of them only have cellphones. Want to know what Manitobans under 30 think about anything? Don’t expect to find out by calling their grandparents on the family landline at 2 p.m.

Nor will even that survey necessarily yield the wisdom we expect from our elders. As Britons found out to their chagrin in the Brexit vote, older people do not always have the interests of the younger ones in mind. Overwhelmingly, the younger voters (at least those who got out of bed to vote) wanted to stay in the European Union — by the same margins older people voted to leave it. Those who had no future of their own apparently did not care much about anyone else’s, either. That’s a disturbing prospect for any society, including our own.

I would thus rather listen to what the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce has to say about implementing a carbon tax than have supposedly random surveys or public referenda guide the development of government policy on ecological issues. Nor would I easily accept the conclusions of think-tanks like the CTF, which boasts such former leaders as Jason Kenney in its “non-partisan” work.

Frankly, the term “think-tank” tends to be an oxymoron. Too often think-tanks merely parrot the ideology of their founders/funders, cloaking their bias in little more than a dollar-store disguise — something (ironically) that actually tanks critical thinking and undermines the credibility of any conclusions they reach.

It is Canada’s 150th birthday today. Later on, after celebrating with family and friends, I will be with a large group of people at the Forks, the historic junction of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers where trade and settlements go back thousands of years.

We will sing O Canada, and – as I have done every time since 2003 – I will change the words from “true patriot love/in all thy sons command” and sing instead “in all of us command.”

In 2003, I began teaching history to students in the Canadian military, through the Royal Military College. The first time I looked at my class list, then out into the room, I knew I could never sing those outdated and entirely inaccurate words again.

The number of women in the Canadian Armed Forces – in all branches, including combat arms – continues to rise. It is a reflection of the ideas about equality that underpin what we do as Canadians, even if we need constant reminders about past (and present) injustices.

It’s not just about what we do, either, but about who we are as a nation and who we are, as citizens.

The proposed change to the national anthem to bring the rest of the country in line for today with what I have been singing for fourteen years have been thwarted by unelected, largely Conservative, mostly (if not entirely) white and male senators.

On a day when we mark our birthday as a nation, their actions remind us how the self-serving and self-interested defence of unmerited privilege threatens the sustainable future not only of our country, but of the whole planet.

It would be easy to associate their actions with patriarchy and misogyny – the barriers that women world wide, including in Canada, must continue to overcome. I consider their attitude more insidious and dangerous than that, however – it is what lies behind racism, religious intolerance and hatred of those who are different, for whatever reason.

More specifically, it is the same attitude that protects personal and corporate privilege, the power to continue to do as one pleases, regardless of the social, cultural or ecological consequences. It is what we have to overcome, and quickly, in order to make the changes to how we live together on this planet, if we want our children and grandchildren to be able to have any kind of a sustainable future.

It may seem a leap to associate those few, unchanged words with such an outcome, but (as national anthems tend to be) they are symbolic of who we are and who we should be as citizens of Canada — and of Earth.

Those women in uniform who looked back at me in that first class had made the personal choice, for their own reasons, to serve Canada at the risk of their own lives, if necessary. They had chosen to protect the people and the institutions of the country, even those mostly white and male Conservative senators. It seems a small thing to offer the nation’s respect for their service by changing a few words.

I’m an historian, so the various attempts at historicizing the national anthem and claiming purity with past traditions as justification for leaving things unchanged are just as lame to me as they sound. It is not about protecting tradition, but preserving privilege.

Things change – and so they should. As First Nations people remind us, the historical record of settlement and colonization reflects many injustices toward aboriginal peoples in Canada.

Our record of injustice toward the other children of Earth who are not human is even worse. We are called “to live with respect in Creation” just as much as we are called to live with respect toward each other.

If we had an anthem for being citizens of Earth, those should be lyrics it includes.

For now, for all of us, and for a sustainable future, those few words can make a difference in how we think about each other and our collective responsibility toward those who will follow us in this place.

O Canada, our home and native land.
True patriot love, in all of us command.

If you are a Canadian, please choose for yourself to sing those words, every time you have a chance to sing the national anthem.

It’s not about who we were, but who we are – and about whom we hope to become.